Tuesday, October 1, 2013

Sabbatha hanti, lodsam hanti, cahanna risone hanti :
words that had been old when the True Knot moved
across Europe in wagons, selling peat turves and trinkets.
They had probably been old when Babylon was young.
The girl was powerful, but the True was all-powerful,
and Rose anticipated no real problem.

"The king asked, in compensation for his toils
during this strangest of all the nights he had
ever known, that the twenty-four riddle tales
told him by the specter, together with the story
of the night itself, should be made known
over the whole earth and remain eternally
famous among men."

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

In the catacomb of my mindWhere the dead endure—a kingdomI conjure by love to rise

— Samuel Menashe, as quoted by
Stephen Spender in a review of four
different poets, "The Last Ditch,"The New York Review of Books , July 22, 1971

"…the ghost reveals that the beggar
is in fact a sorcerer, a necromancer
who is preparing the mandala in order
to achieve an evil end. The ascetic
intends to bind the ghost to the corpse,
place it in the center of the circle,
and worship it as a deity."

Thursday, December 16, 2010

Monday, May 24, 2010

The weekend's posts in this journal coincided,
more or less, with the finale of the TV series "Lost."
Recalling each story brings to mind
the subtitle of Heinrich Zimmer's classicThe King and the Corpse —

Tales of the Soul's Conquest of Evil.

Here, in the spirit of "The Fifth Element," is a
brief graphic summary of such a conquest—

“…all opposition, as well as identity, stems from Maya. Great Maya is wisdom and increase, stability and readiness to assist, compassion and serenity. Queen of the World, she is alive in every nuance of feeling and perception; feelings and perceptions are her gestures. And her nature can be sensed only by one who has comprehended that she is the unity of opposites.” —The King and the Corpse

Levi-Strauss, obtuse and boring, is an opposite, of sorts, to the smart and funny Dundes. The latter, in the binary opposition posed in yesterday’s Log24 title “Sinner or Saint?,” is definitely on the side of the saints. (See selected Log24 entries for the date of his death– Warren Beatty’s birthday.)

"… the goddess at last bodily appeared to him, dark and slender, hair hanging free, and standing on the back of her tawny lion. He gave her greeting. And Kali, 'The Dark One,' addressed him with the voice of a

265

THE KING AND THE CORPSE

cloud of thunder: 'For what reason have you called? Make known your wish. Though it were unattainable, my appearance would guarantee its fulfillment.'"

"A possible origin of this puzzle is found in a dialogue
between Socrates and Meno written by the Greek philosopher,
Plato, where a square is drawn inside a square such that
the blue square is twice the area of the yellow square.

Colouring the triangles produces a starting pattern
which is a one-diamond figure made up of four tiles
and there are 24 different possible arrangements."

"The king asked, in compensation for his toils during this strangest
of all the nights he had ever known, that the twenty-four riddle tales
told him by the specter, together with the story of the night itself,
should be made known over the whole earth
and remain eternally famous among men."